Artificial Intelligence. A meme that is rising up the news ranks in the last couple of years, from news articles to being a venture capitalist sweet spot, to blockbuster movies etc. The word artificial some how seems to mean, unnatural, un-human and attracts a lot of negativity. This thinking drummed into our current ‘cultural education’ system or outlook. However, I watched the BBC series, How We Got to Now with Steven Johnson, Steven used the word artificial time and time again with the two main times jumping out to me was artificial light and artificial cold, that is ice to me and you.

Artificial cold, fridges to air conditioning, artificial heat, cooking to central heating, and artificial light, street lighting to fiber optics. Artificial is with us everyday, through every season, every year. It only seems natural that artificial will be applied to intelligence and that it too will be with us everyday of every season, maybe forever.

Coins have been with us for some time. Metal in form to digital in form as technology advances, right now cryptocurrencies are at the leading edge of innovation. Still the language of cryptocurrencies yarn back to the terminology of old, with ‘mining’ the process of creating new coins. Coins are intrinsically bound to money, the creation of money, the spending, saving or investing etc. Money, has transformed the Culture of Society. The Cyptocurrency community continues to innovate apace, colored coins to coins created by sensors recording the supply of travelling speed. There is a vast ocean of possibilities for coins still to explore. While this horizontal evolution is being explored will a vertical, step change to a post monetary currency Culture start to emerge?

What is a post monetary currency? For a start coins need to be replaced. But by what? Quotients (Q). The price of a coin is governed by the economic laws of demand and supply. Quotients are a unit of computational information that derives value in the consensus of a network and self (i.e. an individual). Bitcoin, Ethercoins, SAFEcoins, darkcoin etc. so can a range of Quotients be envisioned? Lets take CiQ (pronounced ‘see’-Q) where a unit of computational information is measured from a Collective Intelligence Quotient (the complexity of problems existing in the network), the value set by the network and a Context Instant Quotient, the value to self at any point of measurement. Coins, are tokens for numbers. Quotients are a number plus a probability e.g. 230-20%. Over time 230CiQ will establish meaning to each and every individual in the network and Society is generally aware of what probability means: 100% certain and 0% no probability of something happening, thus all percentages are in between these two extremes. The big question is how are these Quotient numbers and probabilities calculated?

Like a coin, a clear, transparent (Fiat money have lost these qualities for a while now) and understandable basis for the creation of Quotients is needed. Here are some technologies that can provide an open source software approach to measuring a computation unit of information. Neural networks and Monte Carlo Simulations. Both require data inputs, how can the quality of this data be trusted? The world of cryptography combined with the our understanding of physics are giving us the notation of ‘zero knowledge proof’ that give certainty that computation events must have happened. As for the neural network or Monte Carlo Simulations, many varieties and software code exist, this diversity of approaches provides the innovation environment to experiment with much like with all the Altcoins listed above. The decentralized and distributed lessons from cryptocurrency community give guidance that, these advanced software programs should be brought to the data of each peer rather than centralized and value offered back as a service.

Quotients have the potential to replace coins. Much innovation and simple trying will be required because ultimately, Society will dictate the numbers that governs its Culture.

There is an i-coin a two side shiny object. On one side the word intelligence is written. Traditionally, coins have heads and a tails side, suggesting opposites, like black and white. This would maybe suggest the tails side of an i-coin would read stupidity? However, it is not, the word written there is Complexity.

Some more thoughts on the theme of entrepreneurship evolution. Over 20 years ago I read about Andrew Carnegie, the bill gates of his time. He was part of the first generation of entrepreneurs that could administer an entire industry, vertically and horizontally consolidating supply chains and customers. Carnegie traveled back to Scotland from the US and here he saw the innovation happening in European steel mills which like all good entrepreneurs he took back home and applied to his own ventures. I would like to tag Andrew Carnegie as a great Administrator innovator. His entrepreneurship brings existing intellect to parts of the world where that knowledge is not known. This type of entrepreneurship I would argue is still the most common in the economy today, I would put Richard Branson forward as a classic contemporary example. However, time moves on and moves at Internet speed. Maybe it is a commentary on our current economic world that this type of Administrator entrepreneurship still has the capital and time to operate, maybe it also a symptom on the narrowness of innovation actually going on?

So, things are speeding up but also a new dimension will now come to dominate, computational power. And the competitive or Darwinian force weeding out the Administrators from the intellect innovators will be their ability to contribute and collaborate new knowledge to the economy.

I think the word entrepreneur is the first in my twitter profile. But for a while now I have been thinking the role of the entrepreneur is evolving. In a political context I have always found it mildly amusing that both the ‘right’ and the ‘left’ were ‘friendly’ towards entrepreneurs, the job creators, builders of businesses or engines of wealth generation or even progress are sound bites that come mind.

Where is entrepreneurship evolution heading? To a post start up world. Start-up has become the term of starting a business but I like to broaden it out to any entity, for profit or not, vocation to a think tank etc. The individual entrepreneur being the master of crafting ideas, people and capital for a purpose. Lets focus on the capital part. It seems clear we are heading towards world where only capital flows will exist. In economics we talk about stock of capital and flow. Raising a seed investment is an entrepreneur receiving a stock of capital (money) to spend on people and assets to make their idea/opportunity come real. However, it is clear to me the amounts of capital has declined dramatically recently, talk of lean start-up. Yes, vast sums of Venture Capital continue to be raised and invested but the fabrics of innovation environment is changing. Crypto-startups I will call them are going straight to IPO’s and the stock of bitcoins are not just tokens of exchange (money) but a connection of human ingenuity, skill and ability to collaborate to make some thing together.

I can only see this trend expanding and accelerating. Less and less stocks of capital or even crypto-capital will be needed up front. Collaboration will flow, all the time, innovation all the time, in short entrepreneurship happening all the time, a post startup landscape.

Earlier this year I had a series of panic attacks over a couple of weeks. Makes you think more about your own mortality. Given this unexpected nudge I have taken some time out to read on the topic of transhumanism. Living in the geek ecosystem / culture you hear the word from time to time along with the technological singularity and even talk on post human beings. There is much to read, listen or code to review online but my online searches got to me to two books.

The first by Ben Geotzel, A Cosmist Manifesto. Ben is the founder of the open source AGI (artificial general intelligence) project, OpenCog . Written with many headings and quick burst of thoughts, explanations and philosophy history or own opinions. The second book was authored by an Economist, Ted Chu, Human Purpose and Transhuman Potential. This was a more demanding read with the breadth and depth of content, thinking and reasoning and sheer range of topics, including putting religion equally at the heart of the book.

Religion and especially religious history would not normally be my choice of reading but I found Ted’s global vantage point, from East to West, believer to atheist, he covered it all and beyond. The rigor of research and references is impressive although I have not had the time to follow any of it to source yet. Before expanding on the main thrust of the topics of both books, I found myself seeing part of my own personal path through the Universe or cosmos being described. How pioneers or those providing a different view point and thinking are not always embraced and often the opposite of encouragement put in the way. Both achieved a person connection along with the big future looking visions.

Both books are putting the case for a post human future, as Ted puts it, Cosmic Evolution. A Universe full of CoBe’s (cosmic beings). AGI could well be one of the technologies that takes us to this state of being. Ted, builds on the thinking of Darwinsm in the context of biological evolution, cultural evolution (which if I understand right includes technology, religion and social forces) and conscious evolution or consciousness 2.0 which will take the the lead in evolution and us humans will ‘give birth to it’. Ted ties all these stands together into a coherent argument to describe the future.

A future not with out many risks. The risks discussion takes up large parts of both books. Morality, playing god or human extinction are all big hitting subjects that both authors rationally discuss from various stance points.

Both authors bring much to think on about the future. By sharing their knowledge, more general awareness is brought to us new or newer to the topic. What gets me is the time scales are not eons away. The most optimistic predictions are a 10% change of transhumans in the next 10 years, 50% chance in the next 20 years. Time will produce the date if ever. Finally, the personal role we each can and do play in the future is brought up by both authors and I found renewed focus and commitment to the part I want to play in the future.

Both books have all or a couple of chapters open sourced and free to read. Invest your attention and mind in one or both.

Putting QS – Quantified Self on the blockchain. I read/listened about the notion of a smart contract on the bitcoin blockchain from Mike Hearn a few months back now. I had been aware of bitcoin for some time, even downloading the mining software but did not persist in getting it to work. The motivation of a currency just was not that strong a pull to put in more effort. However, I had overlooked the whole underlying blockchain technology but on understanding the notion of a smart contract I did not make the same mistake again. I went back to the beginning and read the founding bitcoin paper paragraph by paragraph with the aid of blog posts and video tp aid learning. It seemed to me that a smart contract would allow the semantic web to hit the blockchain.

I use the words, semantic web but I was thinking much broader, knowledge itself combined with the time-stamping transaction logic of the blockchain. From this insight, I started to think through how my ‘day to day job/project’ opensportproject.org would apply. One of the key problems I was coding at the time was allowing individual swimmers to share this personal best times with each other Peer to Peer. The data would be self added initially so how could we trust the data inputted? How would a club verify a new club record has been achieved and should become part of the clubs publicly list records page? What if that time record was a masters Scottish record, British, European or even an alright world record? This is a time plus knowledge + identity example, but what about if two individuals were to exchange genomes peer to peer?

All this data adds up to make the Quantified Self. How do we put this data on the blockchain? Is a blockchain the best place for it to be? Lets break it down into three parts, QS data collection, QS storage and knowledge or intelligence extracted some how, ie the smart contract. QS data collection is about knowledge structuring, the sensor records a measurement, whether it be time, movement, medical heart rate, genome, self descriptive perspective, location etc. etc.. Each sensor can be uniquely described and the knowledge description of the data captured, time, units, distance, frequency etc. The term Internet of Things is applied. Each sensor could – should have its identity on the blockchain?

Storage is somewhat easier, right now cloud computing dominates, EC2 or S3 are popular services. Now we have the likes of MaidSafe.net Peer to Peer decentralised storage and compute power. Even brand new blockchain platforms are emerging e.g ethereum.org . Right now you can have Peer accounts in the cloud but on the same instance, therefore storage in affect centralized, albeit with back up services to reduce this risk.

Data is just data, what does it mean to me, us, the Universe? Can personal statistics, data mining or machine learning software be run as a smart contract on each new sensor data element added and feedback displayed or fed back into a body directly. All life’s activities happen where they happen, not in the cloud so the decentralized nature of the blockchain provides instant analysis, in the context of me, the others at the location networked and via the web to all. Decentralized over cloud wins in QS all the time.

What is the overall goal of putting QS on the blockchain? Transhumanism or post humanism would be a logical conclusion.

An example: I have to travel to London for an internet conference. This turns out to be the hottest week of the year and combined with the heat is pollution and pollen. I am a hayfever suffer. I need to get a taxi back to my lodging for the week. I look at my taxi app and see a taxi offers special hayfever air conditioning, its a bit more expense but I go for it. Could happen today? Well, in this example, there is no human involved on the taxi side. It is a smart contract on the blockchain that had data mined its own and other sensor data, data mined twitter and decided a hayfever filter would be a good differentiation in the marketplace this week. It entered autonomously into a contract with a local garage to fit the improved filter. My own QS data analysis had shown my own increased stress levels and those were used to filter against the taxi options. And if a ‘currency payment’ still exists in the future the resulting transaction would join the blockchain too.